Noguera selected Oakland Unified Public School systems. The population of students consists of mostly “poor, immigrant, and non whites” (p. 89) who according to Noguera, financial circumstances affect the ability to leave, thus students are stuck attending failing schools. Noguera states that differences in per pupil spending as well as social and financial inequities affect local controls on schools. Noguera believes there are four influencing factors affecting local control. Funding from local tax revenues and community resources to generate additional income from poor families is smaller than that of affluent neighborhoods.
Some schools, like the grammar schools, require a good result on the 11+. This leads to cream skimming, but also off-loading of ‘bad’ students, that for example will refuse children with learning difficulties good education, because they are “those students who won’t do well anyways”. The top students often seem to be from the middle class. They don’t suffer from material or cultural deprivation and often use the elaborated code, which makes education easier for them. This makes the schools trying to appeal to the middle class parents, to make the middle class parents choose their school and help them get their own results better.
Funding for schools in this country is grossly disproportionate to educational needs. Funding plays a giant role in student success rates, and most school district funding comes from the districts them selves. A poor district doesn’t have the resources a rich one would. If a child grows up in a society with an inferior education, how is that child going to contribute to his society as an adult? Chances are he wont be able to and the cycle will just continue.
School uniforms can also be a very uncomfortable fashion that students would not take a liking to. They also won’t be the “quick fix” that many people think they are. The first reason uniforms should not be required is that most schools across the country believe uniforms take away from an individual’s identity, so they don't require their students wear them. In today's world a person’s identity and having a good sense of self is important to the diversity that Americans have shown in the past. In schools that require uniforms the student body all look like the same person, very bland and boring people.
Diverse is just a word that schools throw out to make their school look better and welcoming to every race. Students in extremely segregated areas feel that they are thrown into any building, no matter what the conditions are of that building, and it is considered a school. Many believe they are not given the adequate learning environment that they deserve. Schools that cater to predominately white children are not in such poor conditions. They have better learning facilities.
Public school systems are intended to provide an equal and substantial education to all children who are enrolled from kindergarten through the twelfth grade in high school. However, many urban neighborhoods such as the areas in inner city Houston have been neglected in being provided with education that is of equal stature of those who reside in suburbs and smaller cities. Although budget cuts have happened to schools in the Houston area, urban area schools have been more affected by these cuts before their budgets were lower to begin with. Therefore, urban area schools lack access to education equal to those in suburban areas. This failure to provide equal education is due to economic inequality, teacher quality, and size difference between
In other words, children end up following in their parent’s footsteps by dropping out of school at a young age. Marty Strange, a writer for Kappan Magazine, wrote an article called “Finding Fairness for Rural Students”. In this article, she states that schools are poorly funded and have inadequate supplies and educators. This problem came about because most public schools are funded by property taxes. But, the homes in low-income communities give little money in which these schools receive from property taxes.
This means working class students are disadvantaged when looking for jobs as higher paid jobs usually require qualifications at degree level, which means they are forced to look for lowly paid, usually primary or secondary sector jobs. Another policy is that of Private Education. This is seen as the most prestigious way of being educated and often provides the better education. However, this is because they are fee paid schools which means they are unaffordable by working class families, which excludes them from getting the best education possible, meaning there is a distinct difference in educational attainment across classes. However, a positive example of state policies enforced to reduce social class differences in achievement include Bursaries from universities, and Sure Start which is a programme to improve early education and childcare by offering two years free childcare to all 3 and 4 year olds.
The problem must solely lie in the schooling environment itself; more specifically, the structure of the educational system. Our current educational system for public schools is run by a government-operated system of firms. These firms are protected from competition because of the “free” education that results from subsides that the local district public schools receive. Economists frown on this because, from an economic aspect, the consumers are given very little choice in the market because of the lack of competition. To increase consumer choice in this market, people have devised several alternate
Through my research I found that so much of the data presented on minorities has a direct correlation to high-poverty. I found that high-poverty is the number one impact on the achievement gap between students. With high-poverty areas dealing with limited resources inequitable facilities and teachers who generally have less experience we are fostering a dilemma that needs drastic system change throughout the whole country. Recent movements in education have not addressed the achievement gap of low income students it has made them more glaring. “NCLB has made public education itself fair game for profiteers, and this can only mean two things: corruption and higher costs.